Early Experimental LSD Cultures in the Clinic

This chapter examines how LSD was initially used in psychiatric clinics to study and reinforce the boundary between normal and pathological, before becoming a politically subversive substance in the 1960s. The author analyzes early clinical practices of meaning-making around LSD in Switzerland, where psychiatric institutions were involved in both clinical trials and the production process of ergot for Sandoz. The chapter situates this history within the broader context of twentieth-century psychiatry, where categories of normal and pathological became increasingly flexible and disputed, culminating in the antipsychiatry movement.

Study at a glance

Abstract

From its very beginning, when a drop of LSD-25 permeated the skin of Albert Hofmann’s fingertips in Sandoz laboratories in 1943, the substance has been a negotiator of boundaries. Symbolized by Hofmann’s bicycle ride, the first intentional trip with the mysterious drug, it has since stood for journeys into unknown realms, expanding limits, and subverting authority. In its early history, however, it initially reinforced a demarcation that is central to modern societies: the one between normal and pathological.1 It was not until the 1960s that LSD became a political substance filled with subversive potential. In the two decades prior, it had been used to study differences between healthy and ill, body and mind, and subjective and objective.2 This chapter analyzes early practices of meaning-making around LSD in the clinic, a crucial site for negotiating the normal and the pathological. During the second half of the twentieth century, these categories became increasingly flexible and disputed in psychiatry, culminating in the antipsychiatry movement of the late 1960s. Psychiatric clinics are closely intertwined with the history of hallucinogens, and not just in terms of clinical trials on patients. In Switzerland, some institutions were also involved in several stages of the production process, such as harvesting rye and sorting ergot for Sandoz.